A tip of the salt-stained Mad Dog Campy cap goes out to the League of American Bicyclists for taking note of GM’s latest ad aimed at luring college kids even deeper into debt by adding “discount” new-car payments to their student-loan tabs.
“Stop pedaling … start driving.” Really? Jesus. I know the corporate ideal is to keep us fat, stupid and up to the hubs in debt, but could we try being a little less obvious about it, GM? I’m surprised your ad agency didn’t slap a big set of tits on that car. They’re implied, of course, by the sneering bimbo in the passenger seat, which is about as subtle as slapping a giant schlong on the grill of an Escalade. F-minus.
Just what every undergrad needs, right? Instead of a fashionable fixie and backpack — retail cost, oh, what, next to nothing? — s/he can take advantage of a “college discount” on a pick-’em-up truck that sells for $22,000 to $48,000, depending upon options, and gets 12-15 mpg city and 18-22 highway.
Sounds like just the thing. Upon graduation, our young GM owner can live in the truck, staying one step ahead of the repo man, until s/he runs out of gas. Then it’s either Mom and Dad’s basement or a Sally Ann tent under the bridge with the rest of the liberal-arts BAs.
• Late update: GM caves to velo-outrage, pulls ad.
Mad Blog Media 
Pat,
What’s wrong with a Cruze or a Sonic? Decent MPG’s in a reasonable size vehicle. As a Dodge Ram Owner (20 MPG Hemi) I find that most folks driving pickups are silver hairs like myself not college kids anyway.
Doug, geezers like ourselves can take the beating. I object to marketing five-figure gas guzzlers to the feeble-minded, dorm-dwellers crazed by hormones and the first few heady days of liberation from the family unit.
The credit-card companies do the same damn’ thing. Before you know it Joe College has amassed debt in the high six figures to score a BA in Fryolator.
There aren’t enough bridges in the country for these folks to sleep under, and the ones we have are crumbling under the weight of these civilian tanks everyone “needs” to fetch a sack of Purina for the pit bull.
Let the little buggers ride bicycles and walk, sez I. Do ’em good.
Pat,
Have you ever seen what Michigan Tech ( outstanding Engineering school) here in looks like in the Winter? I love my bike as well as you do, but some of our campuses here are just too spread out.
They will find your frozen body in the spring.
Doug, I spent four years at the University of Rochester, right in the heart of Upstate New York’s Snow Belt. Never had a car.
It was, to be sure, designed to be walkable and had a shuttle service to a student parking lot (“Lot A”) a couple miles away, for those who wanted to keep a car for weekend fun and frolic.
The Houghton campus was great for XC skiing.
Khal,
Mich Tech is in the middle of no where in the upper peninsula, not in Rochester or Buffalo. Big difference.
Of course, then there is this: http://autos.yahoo.com/news/bikes-from-car-companies.html
Just what cyclists need: another bike “made” by a car company.
Now granted the Colnago Ferrari adaptation from the late 90s was cool but not any less cool than the fiasco this story tries to ‘sell.’
Got my own spin on that ad.
http://labikes.blogspot.com/2011/10/general-motors-to-students-get-hooked.html
Shame on GM, don’t we taxpayers own a piece of them? What happened to those fuel-efficient cars they were supposed to build and market? At least the kid going into hock for a Chevy Volt would be better with a “stop pedaling…” campaign. College students are pretty lazy …some of the wife’s students hike out to the parking lot, fire up their gas-guzzler and drive a couple hundred yards to another parking lot to avoid walking across the tiny campus. I’m sure most of the bikes purchased for the recent cycling lifestyle course she taught back in August have not turned a wheel since the class ended. Maybe if gas was $10 a gallon as it is here in Italy, the idea of driving some Chevrolet Subdivision wouldn’t be so attractive?
The Volt starts at @ $40K. Plus, it’s not loud enough to attract the opposite sex.
During the TdF, a freecreditreport.com ad ran continuously that suggested they could get you off a bike and into a car (loan). I don’t know if they were a Versus sponsor or the cable company’s local ad air time. It was always jarring – weird.
U of New Mexico tuition is now about 5500 per year for undergrads. Resident costs at New Mexico Tech at Socorro, a very good technical school, are about 9k. Looking at top tier state schools, the U of California tuition is about 13k per year and SUNY Stony Brook, comparable to the best UC schools, chargers about 8k.
To understand what a subsidy Uncle Sam and your favorite state legislature are providing you at one of these flagship public universities, I checked my old Alma mater, the U of Rochester. Tuition alone is 41k per year. Total resident costs are about 60k per year, including room, board, and fees. That is more than an order of magnitude more than when I was a UG on the River Campus; annual tuition was just shy of 3k per year and I struggled to pay that. Figure out how old I am….
I can’t imagine why an undergrad would want to add another big, frivolous expense except they are so fucking spoiled by their subsidies they don’t know how good they have it. When I was at UH, a lot of us grumbled that the same students who howled over tuition increases had monthly car payments and very nice cars. Talk about priorities. Even at places like the U of R, students are not paying the whole bill–and students at good private schools are not all rich.
If one is living at home and commuting to school, perhaps a car is a necessary evil if other cheaper forms of motion are unavailable.
But even then, it doesn’t have to be a new car with a new car mortgage. Who among us drove anything but beaters during college? A small minority perhaps were funded by mom and pop for the fancy wheels (I knew one guy at the U of R whose parents bought him a 914. Pissed us off when he raced it between dorms). The rest of us drove hand-me-downs, if that. AFAIC, if students can afford cars, they can afford more of their tuition burden.
Hate to change the topic, but does anyone have a handle on what the Wall Street protest is aiming to accomplish? Other than frustration, I can’t quite grasp what they’re trying to communicate.
And Doug, jeez, a Hemi? Really? Shouldn’t you be living in Texas and wearing a ball cap backwards?
I think its the Left’s answer to the Tea Party. I remember when I didn’t take them seriously as a political movement. Big mistake.
Whether the Wall Street protests gains the popular mandate the TP folks have, I really don’t know. Here is Sen. Bernie Sanders’ spin: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/wall-street-protests_b_1000642.html
What Ira, I don’t have the right to drive what I want?
I miss having a rig big enough for me to sleep in on road trips. The last one was a 1998 Toyota Tacoma that I never really warmed up to. It started developing various mechanical ailments at around 100K on the odometer, which used to be the point at which a Toy’ was starting to get broken in.
Traded it for the Forester and have been happy with the Subie barring the sleeping-in-the-car thing. Last Subie I could snooze in was Herself’s Nineties-vintage Legacy Brighton wagon. With the bikes on the roof and the seats folded down there was plenty of room for a 6-footer in the back of that bad boy, and it still got good gas mileage.
Pat,
I’ve looked at the newer Subarus and they seem to only get 3 or 4 more miles per gallon than my Ram Pickup gets. The trade off in size isn’t worth that few MPGs in my book.
Y’all are getting worked up over nothing. The chick in the ad is clearly laughing at the fact the guy is riding somy very un-cool non-aero brake levers.
I mean shit….didn’t those things go out with the 80s?
Nope … got a bike with non-aero levers in the garage right now, and it’s brand-spankin’ new. Rolled it right off the show floor at Interbike and into my Subaru. Sucka has eight-speed downtube shifting, too. It’s so retro I need me some Andy Hampster Oakleys to ride the sumbitch.
Jeez, you sound like all my other loaded touring friends. Next it’ll be the Brooks saddle rant.
I did wear the Oakleys back in the day. Best part was the reverse-raccoon suntan.
Man a whole lot if stereotyping going on today. Let’s see of the bunch of current and very recent undergrad and grad students I know well:
1 works as a contract sound/game designer in LA – BFA in a very technical field. Has a couole if movie and game design credits No loans, drives a 5 yo Honda Fit
1 is getting his degree in Graphic communication at IU. No loans, drives a Scion TC (autocross, the shame) and some 250 Japanese moto (the horror)
1 ones an MD starting his internship. Tons if loans he’s working at paying off. Drives some old Japanese thing
1 a new lawyer loans oh yea. Drives moms old Honda van.
I could go on. The experience here is the kids understand their debt and even BFAs get real jobs in their field.
Non-aero brake levers? I need a pair of those for my l’Eroica bike project. These old bike rallies require those, along with downtube-mounted shifters and clip ‘n strap pedals. I’ve got a Bianchi old enough while the wife’s got a Landshark close enough in age to qualify. Need to scare up a nice pair of Simplex retro-friction shift levers too, too bad I sold all that stuff off on ebay BEFORE the “bici di epoca” thing caught my feeble attention. As to dumb college kids, my wife needs more of ’em so she can continue in the hardest job on earth, making them think for themselves and avoid bogus “offers” from GM! Glad to see they pulled the ads
Dang, Larry. I had an very early eighties Univega Speciallisima with non-aero brake levers and bar-ends that I bought at a garage sale in Hawaii and used as a daily commuter. It was practically pristine when I got it. Rode the wheels off of it. Eventually, I spread the rear triangle to 130 mm and modernized it with an eight speed cassette on lighter wheels and added indexed bar ends, but left the retro brakes and retro cantis on it. It had quite nice lug work.
Sold it to a friend after a few years of living in New Mexico because I rarely rode it any more, rather riding the stiffer, more nimble cross bike the hilly roads to work. That friend, also named Larry, was looking for a touring bike for long low intensity rides and he still rides that bike down where they retired, near Las Cruces. Now I miss it and am waiting for a touring frame to show up so I can build another one! Sadly, all the retro stuff has long been donated, sold, or blown up.
added the “very” to “early” and forgot to change the “an” to an “a”. Sheesh…
Exactly. I got rid of all of mine, then caught this “bici di epoca” thing so I’ll be buying some of it back now. I did score a brand-new set of Campagnolo Super Record brake levers (the way-cool ones with the drilled out lever blades) the other day for less than $50. Those will go on the wife’s retro bike of course!
Ooohh, nice score! I used to lust after the Zeus gruppo with everything milled & drilled so much it probably whistled in the wind.
I have a milling machine now, but no Campy stuff to use it on. Shimano just doesn’t seem to rate that treatment.
Thanks for the update, Patrick. Way to go!
These people haven’t actually been on a college campus in a while, have they? The tag line should read, “Stop pedaling and start driving around in circles looking for a goddamn parking spot.” I work at a university, and spending several hundred dollars for a hunting permit in a lot a half mile from my office would be considerably more shameful than biking or taking a bus. It’s even worse for the students, most of whom are packed five plus into off campus apartments with parking for one.
GM doesn’t care about reality, Art. They sell you the car. Then its your problem to park, feed, and pay for it.
Your comments remind me of my time at the U of Hawaii. Four hundred bucks for a hunting permit was pretty accurate. Plus, faculty and students were all in the same hunt, at least down in the parking structure below campus. Get in early or forget it.